Chapter 112
Aria’s POV
He shut the door behind us with the soft click of finality, and the air changed. Dense. Electric. Like the room itself had been waiting for this, our inevitable collision.
The walls pulsed with silence, and I turned slowly, catching the look in his eyes. Not fury anymore. Not even suspicion.
Hunger. Fury’s older, crueler brother.
Dominic crossed the room with measured steps, a wolf out of patience. His hand found my throat before I could say a word, warm, strong, his thumb resting just beneath my jaw, as if he were debating whether to kiss me or crush me. I didn’t flinch.
“You….” he breathed against my ear, lips brushing the shell of it, making my skin shiver, “…are a very disobedient girl.”
I tilted my chin, that half–smile curling up slow on my lips. “Woman,” I corrected, voice low, lazy, a taunt wrapped in silk. “I’m no longer a girl, if you haven’t forgotten. I am a dying cancer woman.”
He growled and I could feel it vibrate against my skin. His grip didn’t tighten, didn’t waver, but his breath caught.
And I smiled wider. The wicked kind. The kind that used to drive him mad.
He inhaled sharply. “Nice,” he said, low and biting. “Nice. Keep on trying to guilt trip me.”
I chuckled, the sound curling like smoke between us. “You are so fucking toxic, Dominic. You can’t even see it.”
His eyes flared, dropping to my mouth. My tongue flicked out and I saw the way his pupils dilated. Like a predator that hadn’t eaten in days. Weeks.
His hand slid from my throat to my jaw, his thumb grazing my bottom lip. Possessive. Hungry. But shaking.
“You make me like this,” he said.
“No,” I whispered. “You made yourself.”
I thought he might kiss me then. Or scream. Or walk away. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he looked at me like I was something he’d carved with his own hands and now couldn’t control.
And then his voice cracked, just enough to make my heart ache. Just enough to make me wish I didn’t love it.
“Where…” he started, then paused, swallowing hard. “…were you?”
His voice wasn’t angry anymore. It was breaking.
And it made me want to burn everything.
I stared at him this man who had caged me, kissed me, ruined me in every possible way and then held my broken pieces like they were his to own. The words scraped my throat, hot and bitter, but I couldn’t lie anymore.
“Carmen’s,” I said finally, and it was the quietest scream I’d ever spoken.
He blinked, the name hitting him like a slap. A muscle ticked in his jaw. His hand fell away from my skin, as if he suddenly remembered he wasn’t supposed to touch what he couldn’t control.
“There,” I said, lifting my chin like a challenge. “That wasn’t hard, now was it?”
The smirk slid onto his face like oil slick, dangerous. “No. It wasn’t,” he murmured.
And then I laughed. Not sweet. Not soft. But sharp, cutting- like the edge of a wine glass shattered in your palm.
“To you,” I said, taking a step back, space like air I hadn’t tasted in days. “Won’t you go and kill Carmen now?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Because that’s what you do, right? You erase anything that doesn’t bow to you. You’re so fucking possessive, Dominic. Keeping a grown woman locked up in your socalled rich estate like I’m one of your goddamn trophies.”
His mouth parted, but I didn’t let him speak. My voice rose like a wave.
“Forgive me,” I hissed, “if I actually wanted to fucking breathe, Dominic. You act like you would’ve allowed it. Like if I asked, you wouldn’t have dragged me down to that little dungeon of yours, chained me up, called it punishment fucked me until I forgot my own name.”
He didn’t deny it.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t move.
Just stared.
Successfully unlocked!
Like I’d gutted him open and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to bleed or beg.
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Chapter 112
His voice, when it came, was gravel.
“I keep you here to protect you.”
“No, you keep me here because you can,” I spat. “Because you don’t know how to want something without owning it. You call it love, but it’s control. It’s obsession. It’s you needing to prove to yourself that you haven’t lost everything.”
The words spilled now, fast and unfiltered. “You can’t stand that you don’t own my sickness. That you can’t fuck the cancer out of me. That sometimes when I look at you, I see death.”
The silence after that was vast.
He didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
But I could see it all of it in his face. That war. That hurt. That low, dangerous ache curling inside his chest like smoke behind glass.
Then he whispered, “You ran to her?”
“Yes,” I said. No apology. Just truth. “Because I needed something that wasn’t you.”
And then the breath he took was jagged. Like it had cut him on the way in.
“Did she touch you?” he asked, voice hollow.
My laugh cracked again, but this time it was colder. “God, you are sick. That’s what you care about?”
He took a step forward, then stopped. Hands shaking. Voice raw. “What did she say?”
I stared at him, long and hard.
“She told me I had a choice,” I whispered. “That I didn’t have to survive like this. That I could still leave. That there’s more than this cage.”
Dominic’s face darkened, but beneath it was something worse. Desperation.
“You won’t,” he said, low. Commanding. Terrified.
I stepped close, my breath against his.
“I might.”
And it killed him.
I saw it.
I didn’t care. I laughed. The tears already there.
“Do you know what’s the best way?” I said, stepping just close enough for him to feel the venom drip from every word. “One thing about a narcissist, is the fear of losing control. And the best way to kill that fear?”
I leaned in. And said the word slowly.
“Death.”
I could see the breath stutter in his chest. Could see the faint flicker in his eyes.
“I wish I was there to see the look on your face when your control fucking slips. When your grip tightens on air and it doesn‘
t answer you anymore. When I’m gone, and there’s no one left for you to break just to feel alive.”
His jaw clenched so hard I heard the crack of his teeth. The muscle twitching there was the only thing that moved.
“You see me as a monster,” he whispered.
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t blink.
“Aren’t you?” My voice was the sound of the blade sliding home. “Aren’t you a monster, Dominic?”
His eyes dark and haunted locked to mine.
“Monsters don’t care,” he said low, almost like he believed it. “I wish I didn’t. For you.”
The tears spilled down my cheeks silently.
He didn’t wipe them. Just watched. Like he wanted to drown in them.
“Monsters keep people trapped,” I choked. “They cage them, silence them, hurt them because they can. You used to care, Dominic. The Dominic I remember…” I swallowed, hard. “He gave me breathing space. This one ” I motioned around the room, this castle of luxury turned crypt, “doesn’t.”
My voice cracked. “He hurts me every single day.”
Silence.
And then, softer than I meant it deadlier “And I hate you.”
I saw it then how that one shattered him more than anything else ever had. Not the lies. Not the betrayal. Not the threats.
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Chapter 112
The hate.
His hand came up not rough, not angry but with that same desperate softness I remembered from the first time he held me
after my diagnosis. When I’d cried in his arms, and he’d promised I’d never have to face it alone
He didn’t ask. Didn’t breathe a warning.
He kissed me.
Hard.
Like he wanted to bleed from it. Like he wanted to punish himself with the shape of my mouth.
And I let him.
Because hate and love, when wrapped in pain, taste exactly the same.
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